ArenaNet announces two million sales mark for Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet have found their own horn this morning and begun thoroughly tooting it, with the news that Guild Wars 2 has passed two million units sold. With the game only being out for two weeks, that’s a fairly staggering one million per week, even when you take into account their decision to suspend digital sales temporarily.

“Despite temporarily halting first-party sales and replenishing retail stores to maintain an optimal player experience, Guild Wars 2 surpassed the two million sales milestone shortly after turning sales back on,” reads the press release excitedly. It took the original Guild Wars just over a year to achieve the same sales figures, an impressive improvement by anybody’s standards.

The launch of Guild Wars 2 has been far from perfect, with server stress issues, widespread hacking, and the ban of over 3,000 players due to taking advantage of cheap vendor items. But to make it to two million in such a short time is well done indeed — hats off to ArenaNet!

If it’s anything like GW1 they may even release some small $10 ‘quest packs’ in future and a GOTY edition account upgrade.

Personally in GW1 alone I probably spent at least $150 just on character slots, storage space and cosmetic armor sets ( most of which I never even wore) just to support the game I enjoyed and got so much time out of without a sub fee.

When you are not paying a sub, its a bit easier to decide on spending some real money at the in-game store. Also being that you can come back to the game after a break without the sub, it can re-hook players easier and convince them to buy some more stuff again.

Oh yeah, already spent an extra $30 to unlock all of the bag slots. I would buy the armor if the light armor didn’t look so crap and it wasn’t a one use thing. But once they start throwing more in to the shop it will be good.

the funny thing is that in GW1 though u had to actually buy them with cash

in GW2 you can just buy them with in game gold, so it’s an odd situation in that you don’t technically need to buy ANYTHING beyond the game with cash, and you don’t even need that much money to buy the ‘upgrades’ like bank tabs etc…

for example at current gold to gem rate of about 25 silver/100 gem on my server, it basically cost 1 gold to upgrade your bag slot, and 2 gold for an extra character slot, and 1 gold 50 silver for extra bank tab.

a gold is technically hard to get early level, but by the time someone hit his 40 and above it’s common expenditure especially given the cost of the gears and upgrades for them…

so with one single character sufficiently focused, he’ll have enough in game gold to buy them in a few days worth generally (to level the character to that point) and from then on he’ll gain enough profit just exploring the world (and butchering the countryside) to grab whatever upgrades he please.

i would expect that they don’t just use free gems but use gems that other players have bought and sold to arena net for in game gold. so someone had to buy it in the first place other players are just earning it in game.

Actually one of the most impressive micro-transaction based systems as it never forces the player to jump into their wallet. It’s a choice that the player is willing to make, unlike other MMO’s which I could name…

i would expect that they don’t just use free gems but use gems that other players have bought and sold to arena net for in game gold. so someone had to buy it in the first place other players are just earning it in game.

There’s no free gem, you never gain any free ones, but when the game launched chances are the price of the conversion of the gem to gold and vice versa were controlled for the short duration of the start to an extent.

Some form of injection and control by the dev when it starts were probably involved, until the economy then runs free on it’s own.

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